China is making moves in a disputed area of the South China Sea

Manuel Mogato, Reuters

Noel Celis//ReutersA Philippine Navy personnel mans a .50 caliber machine gun during the bilateral maritime exercise between the Philippine Navy and U.S. Navy dubbed as Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) in the South China Sea near waters claimed by Beijing June 29, 2014.

MANILA (Reuters) – China has started dredging around the disputed Mischief Reef in the South China Sea, a Philippine navy commander said on Thursday, signaling Beijing may be preparing to expand its facilities in the area.

Last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping tried to set Southeast Asian minds at ease over the country’s regional ambitions, but Beijing’s reclamation work in the Spratlys underscore its drive to push claims in the South China Sea and reassert its rights.

China has already undertaken reclamation work on six other reefs it occupies in the Spratlys, expanding land mass five-fold, aerial surveillance photos show. Images seen by Reuters last year appeared to show an airstrip and sea ports.

China has claims on almost the entire South China Sea, which is believed to have rich deposits of oil and gas. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan also have claims on the sea where about $5 trillion of ship-borne trade pass every year.

Rear Admiral Alexander Lopez, commander of the Philippine military’s western command, told reporters on Thursday a Chinese dredging ship was spotted at Mischief Reef, about 135 km southeast of the island of Palawan.
"We don’t know what they plan to do in Mischief," he said. "They have long been doing that, only that it was Fiery Cross that got a lot of attention because that was on a bigger scale."
IHS Jane’s said in November images it had obtained showed the Chinese-built island on the Fiery Cross Reef to be at least 3,000 meters(1.9 miles) long and 200-300 meters (660-980 ft) wide.

Reuters

Lopez did not say when China started the dredging work or give any details on the extent of reclamation at Mischief Reef, saying only the work had been "substantial".

Surveillance photos that were taken of Mischief Reef last October showed no reclamation work in the area.
The photos, seen by Reuters, showed two structures, including a three-storey building sitting on an atoll, equipped with wind turbines and solar panels.

China occupied Mischief Reef in 1995, building makeshift huts, which Beijing claimed provided shelter for fishermen during the monsoon season. But, China later built a garrison in the area, deploying frigates and coast guard ships.

In 2002, Southeast Asian states agreed with China to sign an informal code of conduct in the South China Sea to stop claimant states from occupying and constructing garrisons in the disputed Spratlys.
Last year, the Philippines and Vietnam protested China’s reclamation work as a violation of the informal code.

North of Mischief Reef, China on Thursday defended the actions of a coast guard vessel in the Scarborough Shoal after the Philippines accused it of ramming three fishing boats.
"China’s coast guard sent a dinghy to drive them away and slightly bumped one of the fishing vessels," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a daily news briefing in Beijing.
"We ask that the Philippines strengthen education and indoctrination of its fishermen to prevent such incidents from happening again."

A Philippine military spokesman, Colonel Restituto Padilla, described China’s action as "alarming" saying the local fishermen were trying to seek shelter due to bad weather.

Mike Nudelman/Business Insider

(Additional reporting by Aubrey Belford in Bangkok and Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing ; Editing by Nick Macfie and Jeremy Laurence)

Beijing’s maritime role has become an increasingly debated issue over the last few years and is potentially one of the most live regions in current global politics. China’s maritime presence is of import in two key regions - the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Of these, the former constitutes what is also known as China’s ‘near seas’ whereas the latter constitutes the country’s "far seas".

Beijing’s foray into both these maritime domains has generated both welcome responses as well as apprehensions, depending on how it affects the interests of respective countries.

The beginning of the year saw two kinds of scenarios being projected regarding the prospects of conflict or peace that would characterize the South China Sea in 2015. The first scenario predicts higher possibilities of armed conflict in the South China Sea with confrontations among the claimants escalating and China refusing to countenance arbitration norms and complaints.

Tensions may continue to rise because China appears to be more intent than ever in defining the oceans off its shores as extensions of the shores - territory to be owned and controlled like “blue national soil".

In this scenario therefore, the Sea is likely to witness increasing levels of contestation which may result in armed clashes, especially between China on one side and either Vietnam or the Philippines on the other. The United States has defense treaties with both these countries and therefore could be drawn into the confrontation should conditions escalate.
Both Manila and Hanoi have filed charges against Beijing regarding territorial sovereignty in these waters which China has steadily and continues to refute.

Beijing released a policy paper in December 2014 in response to the arbitration case filed by Manila at an arbitral tribunal in The Hague which articulates the country’s position regarding the disputed waters and categorically states that the tribunal does not have any jurisdiction in the matter and hence China will not accept its ruling.

The second scenario posits that the possibility of conflicts rising in the South China Sea in 2015 may actually decrease in the wake of decreasing prices of oil. According to this point of view, following a global recession in oil prices, China might find it less profitable to explore for oil in the South China Sea.
This in turn would reduce the likelihood of conflict in these waters given that the exploration activities of Chinese oil rigs are often the cause of renewed tensions among the Southeast Asian claimants.

The reality of how the South China Sea witnesses 2015 may lie somewhere in between. One of important ways in which Beijing’s steadfastness may be portrayed is the situation following the ruling of the arbitral tribunal, which is expected later this year. Philippines would not want to miss the opportunity of highlighting its claims in case the ruling goes in its favor.
China on the other hand wants to keep the restive state of the waters alive, it would seem. While the country does not acknowledge the jurisdiction of international law or the UNCLOS, according to the former, maritime claims are determined with respect to sovereignty over land. Hence, as long as claims to the rocks and shoals of the Sea are disputed, disagreements over the water would continue as well.

One of the key reasons often mentioned for Chinese assertions in the South China Sea and its gradually increasing presence in the Indian Ocean, is to secure its energy needs. The Indian Ocean forms the route via which China gets most of its energy supplies from and the South China Sea is estimated to hold large reserves of oil and natural gas. For a country that is "rising", energy is vital.

This is why, Beijing has embarked upon a long term strategy to befriend and develop political, economic and military ties with littoral states of the Indian Ocean region. Most of these countries such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar, want to balance their involvement with China on the one hand with that of their ties with the US and India on the other.

Sri Lanka, till date has been the most welcoming towards China in this respect, although with the incumbent Mahinda Rajapakse conceding defeat in the recent elections, this approach might become more nuanced as Maithripala Sirisena, the new President, does not seem as enamoured by Beijing as his predecessor.

Another opinion that has recently gained ground is that more than energy, Chinese prominence in these waters is directed at maintaining and securing its naval assets in its contest with the US over nuclear strategy.

Beijing has now acquired second strike capability and therefore deterrence against the US which would consequently enable it to keep the littoral countries of the region at bay, may be at the heart of Chinese goals. The underwater naval submarine base at Hainan Island is an important naval asset that the country seeks to protect and develop. China has almost finished construction of a second airstrip on the Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly islands, according to recent reports, which would offer significant power projection capabilities.

Be it securing energy or developing its nuclear and naval capabilities, Beijing is poised to assume a more prominent presence in both the Sea and the Ocean. While in terms of maritime capability, the country still has a long way to go in comparison with the US, countries of South and Southeast Asia need to acknowledge the fact that China’s role will become increasingly manifest.

While this in itself may not indicate a intimidating prospect, given the country’s assertive and often uncompromising actions in the recent past, the situation may go either way. There is a need now more than ever before to think outside the box and engage with China in a manner that would help offset an adverse scenario.

Pratnashree Basu is a Junior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata, India.

VietNamNet Bridge – Though it is slow and difficult to identify, China’s strategy of building artificial islands in the South China Sea (Bien Dong Sea – East Sea) is dangerous because of its strategic value and the ability to change face that benefits China once the island chain is fully developed.

China’s East Sea policy has a clear delineation between short term and long term.
The strategy to maintain a continuous presence in the undisputed waters to gradually turn them into disputed areas has been resolutely pursued by Beijing. The 981 oil rig incident is a typical example. China used this oil rig as a "mobile sovereignty landmark " to maintain its presence in the undisputed waters, even in the areas that are completely within the exclusive economic zone of its neighboring countries.

The objective of turning from "no dispute" to "dispute", from "theirs" to "ours", have been implemented in accordance with the motto of the Chinese people, "What is mine is mine, what’s yours, we can negotiate."

Along with that move, China’s strengthening and expansion of the construction of artificial islands has shown their long-term strategic calculations in the East Sea. The 981 oil rig is a pretty risky move, but it is substantially easier to manage and attract the support of the international community for a small country like Vietnam. Meanwhile, though it takes place slowly and is difficult to identify, the artificial island building strategy is more dangerous.

Another way to evaluate China’s East Sea strategy is through changes of targets in certain stages. These are intentional changes. We will see the same thing when considering China’s maritime strategy from 2009 to present. For example, how could China say that the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) – signed in 2002 and the guidelines for implementing the DOC signed in 2011 – would be the lodestar navigation of the parties, when the use of force is still a key tool in Beijing’s policy.

Currently, what we can see most clearly in China’s steps are the consistency of the overall goal to increase the ability to control the entire East Sea. What is not clear is the specific objectives and tasks that every single department of China will perform.

This is considered the main difficulty, because Vietnam in particular and more broadly, the ASEAN countries and the international community in general, will find it difficult to know in detail what the Chinese agencies in charge of the East Sea will do what, when and where.

Keep calm
Therefore, Vietnam should not be so focused on predicting the short-term and specific goals of China, but on learning about the nature and long-term strategy of China.

Vietnam should probably determine the correct perspective and develop a comprehensive strategy for the East Sea before going into each small act of China. From there, from the overall view, Vietnam can build detailed objectives and plans for each phase.

This raises the need to focus on building a long-term and overall strategy to deal with the long-term goal of China. A sound strategy with clear objectives and specific division of tasks will help ensure efficient utilization of resources within and outside the country, thereby creating advantages in the field and on the negotiating table. Without an overall strategy, Vietnam will be unable to cope with the inconsistent statements and actions of China.

Explaining Southeast Asia’s Force Buildup
Balancing alone does not explain the build-up of conventional military assets in Southeast Asia.

By Matthew Ribar

Image Credit : Russian arms expo via ID1974 / Shutterstock.com

The ongoing proliferation of submarine capabilities among Southeast Asian states is a hot topic in international politics. Arms races have been sparse since the end of the Cold War, so any series of events that appear to have those characteristics is widely studied. Most scholars have explained the arms build-up as a balancing of forces ; however, such demand-side explanations overlook an underlying supply-side explanation, which is the global buyer’s market for arms.

The navies of Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam all boast submarine forces, with the Philippines announcing plans in December to acquire similar capabilities. The submarines are foreign made, and often second hand. The submarines range from Swedish Challenger-class (for Singapore), French Scorpène-class (Malaysia), German Type-209 submarines (Indonesis), and Russian Kilo-class (Vietnam). Most of these acquisitions have been recent, and this flurry of activity is what observers have called a force build-up.

Naturally, scholars have set about providing explanations for this force buildup. A particularly common explanation is that these states are balancing their military capabilities against various states. Some commentators have speculated that Southeast Asian states are balancing against each other, citing an inter-ASEAN naval arms race. But military balancing activity within a strong regional organization is rare behavior. Even though ASEAN’s focus on security cooperation is secondary, it would still be strange for states within such a well-institutionalized regional organization to be squaring off against each other in the manner suggested by the rate of naval acquisitions.

More commonly, observers link a naval buildup to the desire to balance aggressive Chinese actions in the South China Sea and more generally. Vietnam specifically had engaged in a naval stand-off with China in the summer of last year over a Chinese oil rig placed in waters claimed by Vietnam, but nearly all of these Southeast Asian states have maritime disputes over China’s claimed “nine-dash line.”

Asia expert Gerhard Wills, however, argues that “While Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia can deploy up to six submarines, China alone has more than 60 of them ; so this can’t seriously be an attempt to strike a military balance.” The argument continues that these states are not interested in achieving military parity with China – clearly none of these states has anywhere near the resource base of China. Rather, these states are interested in increasing their asymmetric capabilities vis-à-vis China, such that any offensive act would entail extremely high costs.

Moreover, the branch of theory from which the idea of balancing comes argues that these power stand-offs occur when one states is challenging another states for dominance. The classic example of this is the Cold War nuclear arms race, when the United States and the Soviet Union were completing for international hegemony. But Southeast Asian states do not share this relationship with China – even a regional power like Indonesia is not about to eclipse China on the world stage. So describing this action as “balancing” against China fails to give the whole story.

Those explanations for the naval buildup that come purely from the demand side of the phenomenon are clearly insufficient. An increasing ability to resist Chinese aggression plays a role in explaining the acquisitions : Chinese actions in the Spratly Islands were specifically mentioned in the recently announced Philippine plans to purchase a submarine force. But by themselves, such accounts are insufficient. An alternative explanation centers on the global “buyer’s market” for arms.

Arms, including naval assets, are increasingly easy to procure. And when supply goes up, it follows that more arms will be bought. Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) shows that military expenditure in the region has been consistently on the rise since 1992.

The shift to a global buyer’s market for arms started with the end of the Cold War, but intensified with the 2008 global financial crisis. Western states, with traditionally high defense acquisition budgets led to new purchases being curtailed. So arms manufacturers turned to countries that were less troubled by the financial crisis, such as the BRICS and ASEAN states. Exporting to these non-traditional markets was a coping mechanism for reduced domestic demand.

A program of arms export deregulation accompanied the market shift. To take the example of the United States (since according to SIPRI it is the world’s largest arms exporter), oversight of arms exports has been moved from the Department of State, to the more business-oriented Department of Commerce. Though the submarines that have been purchased in Southeast Asia have come from European states, the American deregulation of arms still promotes a buyer’s market mentality for the global arms trade.

Clearly this market shift applies to more than just submarines. Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia are all among the world’s top 20 arms importing countries, according to SIPRI data. Singapore has imported American F-15 fighter jets. Malaysia and Indonesia imported Su-30s from Russia. Main battle tanks, armored personal carriers, and personal rocket launchers have also been delivered to various Southeast Asian states.

Balancing alone is an insufficient explanation of the build-up of submarine forces (and other conventional military assets) in Southeast Asia. Increasing asymmetric capabilities to raise the costs of potential Chinese aggression is clearly a motivating factor. But a complete explanation includes the fact that arms imports are increasingly available for these states. In short, it is a buyer’s market for arms, and Southeast Asian states are taking advantage of that.

Matthew Ribar is a research assistant, and an analyst for the St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review.

Mark Valencia expects more political wrangling and run-ins over maritime disputes in the South China Sea this year as China and the US continue to jostle for regional influence

Flux is integral to international relations and that describes the political situation in the South China Sea.

Last year was not a good year for international relations on the South China Sea. In fact, one could argue that the conflicting interests became the primary security issue in Southeast Asia. This year is unlikely to be better and could be worse.

Flux is integral to international relations and that describes the political situation in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea. China – which aspires to be the dominant regional power – is trying to build positive relations with neighbours and fellow claimants to disputed territories, and also with the US, which currently dominates the region.

The tone and tenor of the China-US relationship affects the political climate. But it is not clear that either is willing or able to make the compromises that a peaceful coexistence requires - let alone a relationship in which cooperation outpaces competition. In China’s view, the US wants to continue the status quo, maintaining, and enhancing, its cold war "hub and spoke" alliance system and presence. With the US "pivot", the South China Sea is becoming a cockpit of China-US rivalry for dominance in the region.

In particular, despite their November memorandum of understanding regarding "rules of behaviour" for unplanned military air and ship encounters, more incidents are likely.
The problem is that these encounters are not unplanned, but purposeful probes and intercepts designed to send a message. China will continue to challenge US naval intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance vessels and aircraft, as well as drones operating on, under and over China’s "near seas".

The US believes China is developing a strategy to control the near seas and prevent access in the event of a conflict – say, between Beijing and Taipei. The US response is the air-sea battle concept, intended to cripple China’s command, control, communications, intelligence and surveillance systems. So, attempts to negotiate preventative measures are unlikely to make much progress.
There is also likely to be little progress in negotiating a robust code of conduct between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and China. China believes other claimants to disputed territories are violating the non-binding declaration on conduct by not negotiating the issues directly with Beijing and instead "internationalising" them. Until they do so, China is unlikely to yield.

The arbitration panel hearing the Philippine complaint against China may render a verdict this year - at least on whether it has jurisdiction to hear the case – and if it decides it does, tensions will rise. China will continue to officially ignore the process and increase pressure on the Philippines and Vietnam to negotiate with it directly.

Regardless of the outcome, the Philippines and Vietnam will continue to appeal for Asean’s support, and the US will continue its tacit backing for their position. Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar will probably still demur on the matter. Indonesia may begin to exercise some leadership within Asean and attempt to bridge the gaps. It will be interesting to see how Malaysia - not exactly a neutral party - will "lead" Asean on this issue as the 2015 chair. Intra-Asean maritime disputes will remain unresolved and could even resurface as stresses and strains undermine unity.

In short, 2015 is likely to bring more of the same for the South China Sea : isolated but potentially serious incidents, political wrangling and megaphone diplomacy. There may be an acceleration of the evolution of pro-US and pro-China factions both within Asean and within individual member countries like Vietnam. Certainly, China and the US will continue to enhance their economic, political and military presence in the region.

In the longer term, there are several ways the political imbroglio could unfold. In perhaps a worst-case scenario for Asean, the US-China rivalry would feed upon itself, exacerbated by domestic nationalists in both countries but particularly in the US in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. The South China Sea disputes would fester and tensions would wax and wane. Proxy domestic and inter-state conflict would become the "new normal". International oil companies would shy away from the disputed areas.

A preferred scenario for Asean would be one in which a robust binding code of conduct is agreed with China and implemented. This would lessen the opportunity for US-China conflict and reaffirm Asean’s centrality in regional security. Not only could this lead to an era of peace and stability in the South China Sea, but the claimants could find a way to jointly explore for oil and gas.

Neither of these scenarios is likely and the reality will be somewhere in-between. The disputes can be managed - particularly if Indonesia becomes the principal broker - but probably not resolved. Asean and its members can try to ensure that the reality is closer to the preferred scenario by seeking to manage US-China rivalry without blatantly siding with either. This will not be easy but it may be key to preserving Asean unity on this issue.

Mark J. Valencia is an adjunct senior scholar at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, Hainan

China on Monday hit back at the Philippines for criticising Beijing’s ongoing reclamation project in the disputed South China Sea, saying that its actions were within the scope of Chinese sovereignty.

China lays claim to almost all of the entire South China Sea, believed to be rich with minerals and oil-and-gas deposits. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan also have claims.

The United States has called on China to stop the land reclamation project that could be large enough to accommodate an airstrip. Beijing has called those remarks “irresponsible”, signalling that it would firmly reject proposals by any country to freeze any activity that may raise tension.

A Philippine national flag flutters in the wind aboard the BRP Sierra Madre, run aground on the disputed Second Thomas Shoal, part of the Spratly Islands, in the South China Sea March 29, 2014. REUTERS

Last week, Philippines general Gregorio Catapang told reporters that China’s reclamation in the area is “50 percent complete”.
“It is alarming in the sense that it could be used for other purposes other than for peaceful means,” he said.

China reiterated that Beijing had “indisputable sovereignty” over the Spratly Islands, where most of the overlapping claims lie, especially between China and the Philippines.
“China’s actions on the relevant islands and reefs are all matters within the scope of China’s sovereignty,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a daily news briefing.

Aerial images from the Philippines military and a leading US defence publication show China is developing an airstrip on one of the islands.
The construction has stoked concern that China may be converting disputed territory in the archipelago into military installations.

The BBC’s Nga Pham reports from on board a Vietnamese coastguard vessel

China says the oil rig that sparked a major diplomatic row with Vietnam by drilling in disputed waters has finished work and is being removed.
In a statement, China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) said it would now assess the data collected by the rig.

China moved the rig into waters near the Paracel Islands – which Vietnam also claims – in May.
The row over the rig led to clashes between ships from the two nations and major anti-China riots in Vietnam.

Vietnam’s coast guard told Reuters news agency that the rig was now moving away towards China’s Hainan island.
Coast Guard Chief of Staff Admiral Ngo Ngoc Thu said the rig had been moving since late on Tuesday. A senior fisheries official also confirmed that the rig was under way.
Vietnam released footage of collisions as the row erupted in May

The news that the rig was moving came in a CNPC statement carried by China’s state-run Xinhua news agency.
"Signs of oil and gas were found in the operation," Xinhua quoted the statement as saying, and CNPC "will assess the data collected and decide on the next step".

The introduction of the oil rig (rear right) led to clashes between Chinese and Vietnamese ships

Anti-China protests in May saw several factories burnt in Vietnam, including this Taiwanese furniture factory
China moved its Haiyang Shiyou 981 oil rig into South China Sea waters west of the disputed Paracel Islands in early May, an action the US described as "provocative" and "aggressive".
Government ships from China and Vietnam then clashed there on several occasions, bumping and exchanging water cannon fire as Vietnam sought to block Chinese drilling operations.
Vietnam also saw three days of anti-China unrest during which angry workers targeted foreign-owned factories in some areas, leaving at least two people dead and dozens injured. Several factories were burned down or damaged.

Both nations claim the Paracel islands and in 1974 fought a brief but bloody war over them.
The introduction of the rig came amid broader tensions between Beijing and South East Asian nations over the South China Sea.

China’s maritime territorial claims overlap those of several of its neighbours and in recent years it has sought to assert these claims in a more muscular fashion.
Ties with Hanoi and Manila have been particularly badly hit. The Philippines is currently taking China to an international court over the issue.

A statement by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Hong Lei on the rig’s removal pointed out that "the Xisha [Paracel] Islands are integral parts of China" and that the drilling operation was in "indisputable" waters which fell within China’s jurisdiction.
China "firmly opposes Vietnam’s unjustified disruptions" to operations, he added.

China Not to Accept International Arbitration on Disputes : Senior Diplomat

A senior Chinese diplomat says China will not accept the international arbitration over the South China Sea disputes.
Vice foreign minister Zhang Yesui made the remarks during the third World Peace Forum in Beijing.
“China will not accept or participate in the international arbitration proposed by relevant countries to solve the South China Sea disputes. We strongly oppose that some countries infringe on other countries’ interests in the guise of legislation. We hope relevant countries can focus on the overall interest and future to return to the path of dialogue and negotiation.”

China has territorial disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines in the South China Sea. And the Philippines has formally requested an international arbitration ruling on the issue.

Zhang Yesui, China’s vice Foreign Minister, delivers a speech at the third World Peace Forum in Beijing on June 21, 2014. (China News)

According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, any contracting party has the right to reject the third party’s compulsory jurisdiction over the disputes about islands sovereign and ocean demarcations.

Speaking at the forum, Former Malaysian prime minister Abdullah Haji Ahmad Badawi called for cooperation in solving the maritime disputes.
“It is a cooperation, it is working together. We can help one another to ensure that we are not going to get into a kind of problems among us. This is something that we must do.”

Chinese officials say Vietnam openly acknowledged that the Xisha islands in the South China Sea belong to China before 1974.
But illegal fishing by Vietnamese boats around the islands has been on the rise in recent years.
Since early May, Vietnam has carried out disruptions against Chinese companies’ oil drilling in waters near the islands.

Meanwhile, Chinese officials say the Philippines stirred up trouble by delivering supplies to its military vessel grounded on a disputed reef in March.

Vietnam and China will find common ground, says Russian expert

There is still a chance for China and Vietnam to reconcile over their territorial dispute in the South China Sea, Andrei Vinogradov from the Moscow-based Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences has told the Voice of Russia.

Vinogradov said regional stability will be destroyed if China and Vietnam are unable to find a peaceful resolution to the standoff which flared up after China began drilling for oil off the disputed Paracel Islands last month, triggering riots in Vietnam in which Chinese factories were burned to the ground.

The expert suggested that China and Vietnam will eventually find a way to resolve the dispute because the two nations are not only close economic partners but also share a similar political ideology.

However, Vinogradov said that it will be hard for China to make any concessions to Vietnam too soon as this would encourage Japan to exert more pressure over the disputed Diaoyutai (Diaoyu to China, Senkaku to Japan) in the East China Sea.

At the same time, the governments of both nations must calculate how their own public will respond to any concession involving national interests and will be wary of a nationalistic backlash against perceived weakness.

Image released by the Vietnam Coast Guard on June 5, 2014 shows a Chinese Coast Guard ship (left) chasing a Vietnamese vessel near the site of an oil rig in the South China Sea, off Vietnam’s central coast (AFP)

The Vietnamese ambassador in Moscow has pledged to give Russia priority access to its military port of Cam Ranh Bay as enticement for support against China in its ongoing territorial dispute in the South China Sea, reports the Global Times, a tabloid under the auspices of the Communist Party mouthpiece.

Pham Xuan Son announced the promise at a press conference on June 19, a day before three vessels from the Russian Navy’s Pacific Fleet completed logistical supply at the bay, a key inlet of the South China Sea situated on the southeastern coast of Vietnam. The ambassador said the two sides were still discussing a joint-venture to provide maintenance services to military and civilian vessels at the bay, adding that Vietnam considered its cooperation with the Russian military "very important."

In a separate interview, Son told Russian media that 95% of Vietnam’s weapons are purchased from Russia, and also noted that the two countries are currently cooperating in the fields of oil exploration and helicopter manufacturing, and were in talks to build Vietnam’s first nuclear power station.

Vietnamese defense minister Phung Quang Thanh said during the inter-governmental security forum Shangri-La Dialogue last month that all commercial enterprises and military are welcome at Cam Ranh Bay. The statement had been perceived as extending an olive branch to the United States, given that the decision coincided with Ted Osius, the new nominee for US ambassador to Vietnam, suggesting that it may be time for Washington to consider lifting a ban on the sale and transfer of lethal weapons to the former American enemy.

Chinese scholar Xu Liping told the Global Times that whether it is allowing Russia to contain China in the South China Sea or buying weapons from the US, China will not allow Vietnam to get its wish.

Citing the views of Russian academics, the Global Times said Hanoi is trying to cozy up to Moscow because it does not have the ability to take on China by itself in the ongoing territorial dispute over the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, which escalated last month when China’s deployment of an oil rig near the islands resulted in violent anti-China rioting across Vietnam. Russia has so far taken a neutral stance in the dispute, just as China had taken a neutral stance after Russia made the much-maligned decision to invade Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula earlier this year.

Top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi visited Hanoi last week in an attempt to ease tensions between the two countries, though reports say no obvious progress was made during Yang’s talks with Vietnamese deputy prime minister Pham Binh Minh. However, both sides said they would continue to maintain high-level contact in an effort to resolve the dispute

A Calibrated Takeover of the South China Sea
China is assertive in the South China Sea, building its military, installing rig near Paracel Islands, ignoring protests from the US and neighbors

Nayan Chanda

China may have taken advantage of fragmentation among its neighbors and a preoccupied international community to set up a big exploration drilling rig in disputed waters. Vietnam “may join the Philippines in challenging China in international court as well as strengthening security cooperation with the U.S.,” writes Nayan Chanda, editor of YaleGlobal in his column for the WorldPost. “The rise of a de facto alliance between U.S. allies like Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam could make real China’s oft-cited fears of encirclement. The danger that such gamesmanship in East Asia could tear asunder the mesh of global interdependence and hurt all might be the only consideration preventing a slide towards wider conflict.” China claims to pursue a peaceful rise, but it is antagonizing neighbors with its claims of near 80 percent of the South China Sea. Neighbors worry about US ability to secure the region as China invests in a fast-growing military while the United States struggles with budget cuts and debt. – YaleGlobal

Chairman Mao’s "little red book" is no longer a fashion accessory in Beijing, but China’s leaders seem to be drawing inspiration from one of its aphorisms : "There is great disorder under the Heavens and the situation is excellent."

Judging by the calculatedly risky steps they have taken – like moving a gigantic drilling rig deep into Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone – China seems to have concluded that, with the West preoccupied with Ukraine, Syria and Iraq, Southeast Asia divided over how to respond to its aggressive moves, and with Japan and the U.S. unsure as to how to respond to North Korea’s saber rattling, the situation is indeed excellent.

CHINA vs. JAPAN
Across the Sea of Japan, though, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appears to have concluded that only by shedding its inhibitions about fighting a war can Japan dissuade China from pushing further into the Senkakus and continuing to gradually take control of the South China Sea.

CHINA vs. VIETNAM
Meanwhile Vietnam, pushed into a corner by aggressive Chinese action and facing the wrath of its own incensed population, may also abandon restraint. Unable to stop the Chinese behemoth by military means, it may join the Philippines in challenging China in international court as well as strengthening security cooperation with the U.S.

The rise of a de facto alliance between U.S. allies like Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam could make real China’s oft-cited fears of encirclement. The danger that such gamesmanship in East Asia could tear asunder the mesh of global interdependence and hurt all might be the only consideration preventing a slide towards wider conflict. But China seems to have found a well-calibrated approach that advances its agenda through limited steps without provoking sanctions.

EUROPE ON THE SIDELINES
Russia’s absorption of Crimea, its threats to dismember Ukraine and its pledge to support ethnic Russians strewn about central Europe have so far brought a rather dismal response from the European Union. With France still committed to a lucrative arms sale to Moscow, British financial markets keen not to lose Russian clients and Germany dependent on Putin’s gas and its exports, Europe does not have much stomach for resistance.

China may have abstained on the U.N. vote censoring Russia, but must have been heartened by the West’s helplessness in the face of Moscow’s aggression. It certainly was not intimidated by President Obama’s indirect warning on the South China Sea dispute in which the U.S. president pointed to sanctions that Russia would incur.

Indeed, barely had Obama returned from Asia when China took its most openly aggressive move – towing a gigantic oil drilling platform well inside Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone on grounds that it overlapped with the EEZ of the contested but Chinese-controlled Paracel Islands. It was not a typical oil drilling operation. A flotilla of 80 ships, helicopters and the occasional low-flying fighter aircraft were deployed to protect the rig from far outnumbered Vietnamese coastguard vessels, ramming them and spraying them with water cannons. The standoff continues as Vietnamese ships play cat and mouse in an effort to sneak through the veritable wall of Chinese vessels surrounding the rig. But there is no doubt about the outcome : China will prevail.

OIL RIG A ’MOBILE SOVEREIGNTY PLATFORM’
Of course, the deployment of a drilling rig, "a mobile sovereignty platform" as a Chinese official described it, was not recently inspired by Putin’s grab for Crimea. It is merely the latest Chinese move in a decades-long game of chess. On a cold January morning exactly 40 years ago, in the waning days of the Vietnam War while Henry Kissinger was courting China for help on pressuring the truculent North Vietnamese, the Chinese navy mounted a surprise attack on a South Vietnamese garrison on the Paracel Islands. They took control of the island and captured dozens of South Vietnamese soldiers and an American adviser. Though South Vietnam was an ally, the U.S. Seventh Fleet turned a blind eye.

Since that 1974 attack, which afforded China its first foothold on the string of islands, reefs and shoals in the South China Sea, it has chosen opportune moments to advance its control. In April 1988, when Vietnam’s ally Mikhail Gorbachev was seeking détente with China, the PLA Navy attacked Vietnamese ships and occupied six reefs in the Spratly chain. In 1995, three years after the Philippines expelled the U.S. from its bases there, the Chinese navy moved in to capture from the Philippines Mischief Reef, another contested feature of the South China Sea.

Chinese policy to realize its claim of nearly 80 percent of the South China Sea has since followed three parallel tracks : discreet incremental military advances ; diplomatic efforts to propose a code of conduct and joint development of energy resources, and ; building robust economic cooperation with ASEAN. In retrospect, the last two tracks seem to have been designed to develop China’s economy enmeshing with the region while concealing its intention, in accordance with Deng Xiaoping’s advice of tao-guang-yang-hui ("keep a low profile").

When the 1997 economic crisis hit Asia, the West’s unsympathetic stance towards Asian "crony capitalism" opened the door for China to emerge as the sympathetic supporter, offering aid and developing economic ties. In the 15 years since, China’s rise as the world’s factory has been accomplished through a concerted effort to better integrate with the ASEAN economies.

The region provides raw materials and agricultural goods and contributes to the vast supply chain that feeds China’s export juggernaut. Countries like Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar – beneficiaries of Chinese aid – often side with Beijing. With the China-ASEAN trade expected to reach $500 billion (60 percent of it meant for export to third countries) the region’s fate is intertwined. The policy of economically tying the region with Chinese economy even extended to historical enemy Vietnam, where Chinese FDI reached over $2.3 billion.

CHINA’S HONEYMOON WITH EAST ASIA IS OVER
That particular honeymoon ended last week, when rioting Vietnamese gutted some of the Chinese owned factories, forcing the evacuation of wounded and frightened workers back to China.

To reassure the region that despite its expansive claims it was willing to show mutual restraint, China signed the Declaration on the Conduct of the Parties in the South China Sea in 2002. The following year, the Chinese and Philippine national oil companies signed a letter of intent to jointly develop petroleum. In 2005, China, the Philippines and Vietnam signed a tripartite agreement on joint seismic surveying activities in the South China Sea. Even Vietnam signed a joint exploration agreement with China in the undisputed Gulf of Tonkin.
The period during which China felt it expedient to follow Deng’s advice ended with the 2007 financial crisis that brought the U.S. and other Western economies to the brink of disaster. China, relatively unaffected by the turmoil and flush with a 3 trillion dollar reserve and a fledgling armed forces, concluded that the time had come for it to turn its paper claims into effective control.

The first major clash came in September 2010, when the Japanese coast guard arrested the Chinese captain of a fishing trawler in the waters of the disputed Senkaku ("Diaoyu" in Chinese) Islands. Two years later, the Japanese government’s decision to buy the privately-held island to defuse public protest raised the conflict to a new level. The situation escalated rapidly from there : in September 2012, China sent six surveillance ships to the Senkakus to assert its territorial claims ; Chinese and Japanese coastguard vessels have played cat and mouse, and China has flown reconnaissance flights over the island and unilaterally declared an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) requiring all flights over the area to submit prior notice to Chinese air traffic control.

China’s naval might has grown apace to allow China to carry a big stick while raising its voice. In August 2011, China launched its first aircraft carrier (a modified Russian hull) and announced the launch of a larger, domestically built carrier in 2020.

More significantly, China has built a formidable fleet of five law enforcement agencies in the water, from Coast Guards to Customs, operating a force of over a thousand vessels – armed cutters, frigates, hovercraft, patrol boats, aircrafts and helicopters. While keeping its large naval assets over the horizon, China has used these "civilian" vessels to enforce Chinese claims – from Scarborough Shoal near the Philippines to James Shoal near Malaysia – by arresting fishermen, disrupting attempts to drill for oil. Eighty such vessels now surround the giant drilling rig, protecting against the Vietnamese vessel challenging Chinese presence in the contested water.

CONQUEST BY ’LAWFARE’
China is well on its way to dominating the South China Sea, whether in the shoals that it has already occupied or the waters where civilian vessels armed with water cannons are enforcing Chinese law in contested areas – "lawfare," as one Harvard lawyer defined it, "the use of law as a weapon of war."

China’s soothing talk of a peaceful resolution of the dispute, respecting a code of conduct and joint development of energy, now seems a thing of the past.
But when China has bared its fangs, the countries contesting its claims have to live with the changed reality on the ground – or, rather, on the water.

China is too close and too powerful for ASEAN countries to stand up to its challenge. As the Philippines found out when Chinese tourists stopped visiting and when Vietnamese riots threatened Chinese and other investment, their economic fates are so closely tied with China’s that resistance is not merely futile, but self-defeating.

Meanwhile, Washington’s admonitions of restraint to China (followed by Beijing’s sneering responses) do not inspire confidence when defense budgets are being slashed and American public opinion is leaning towards isolationism.

It is against this background that some of Japan’s traditional pacifists are stirring and considering dropping the nation’s taboo of fighting abroad. The only realistic resistance that Southeast Asian neighbors can mount is to join the Philippines in taking China to the international court, whose jurisdiction China does not recognize.

As far as Xi Jinping can see, the situation is indeed an excellent one in which to establish Chinese hegemony over the South China Sea.

Nayan Chanda is the founding editor-in-chief of YaleGlobal Online published since 2002 and is a contributing editor of The WorldPost. For nearly 30 years before he joined Yale University, Chanda was with the Hong Kong-based magazine the Far Eastern Economic Review as its editor, editor-at-large and correspondent. In 1989-90 Chanda was a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. From 1990-1992 Chanda was editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, published from New York. He is the author of Bound Together : How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers and Warriors Shaped Globalization (Yale University Press, 2007).

China’s Oil Rig Gambit
China’s dispatch of an oil rig to waters claimed by Vietnam threatens armed conflict, and makes Washington a party whether it likes it or not.

By Keith Johnson

Photo by Vietnam Coast Guard - AP

As China and Vietnam enter the second week of their tense naval standoff in the South China Sea, three questions loom large : What is China trying to achieve, could this turn into a shooting war between the two historical enemies, and what does this all mean for the U.S. pivot to Asia ?

The short answers : China watchers are puzzled by Beijing’s aggressive behavior, which seems both a departure from its previous approach to regional relations and potentially counterproductive ; no guns have yet been drawn, but this could quickly turn violent ; and U.S. desire to maintain influence in the region could hinge on how it handles a dispute between two communist countries – and on whether neighboring nations believe Washington is willing to go to the mat to stand up to a rising China.

China’s dispatch of a huge, billion-dollar offshore oil rig to waters claimed by both Beijing and Hanoi sparked the biggest conflict in years between the two countries. Over the weekend, Vietnamese officials said, Chinese ships sent to escort the oil rig rammed and fired water cannons at Vietnamese coast guard vessels sent to investigate. Tensions remain at a fever pitch, with Chinese officials claiming Friday, May 9, that Vietnamese ships and frogmen are interfering with the oil rig’s operations, though no further naval clashes have been confirmed.
The clash, the most serious since a similar showdown between China and Vietnam in 2007, has zoomed to the top of the agenda for the summit this weekend of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which in turn has infuriated Beijing. China doesn’t want any international groupings to discuss the maritime disputes, which it prefers to settle on a bilateral basis.

The Philippines, which has its own fresh dispute with China this week after Philippine Coast Guard officials arrested someone they said was an illegal Chinese fisherman, will seek to put maritime disputes at the heart of the ASEAN confab and seek progress on a code of conduct that could give countries a peaceful way to resolve territorial disputes. In response, Chinese state-controlled media attacked the Philippines for trying to "instigate tension" in the region by promising to bring up maritime disputes at the annual ASEAN summit.

The real bad guy, in Chinese eyes, isn’t the Philippines or Vietnam, however. Instead, Beijing says that the United States, by pursuing its pivot to Asia, has emboldened countries in the region to take an unnecessarily tougher and more provocative stance toward China than they had in recent years.
"It must be pointed out that the recent series of irresponsible and wrong comments from the United States, which neglect the facts about the relevant waters, have encouraged certain countries’ dangerous and provocative behavior," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said at a regular briefing Friday, Reuters reported.

China was responding to tough talk from the U.S. State Department in the wake of news that the two countries had actually clashed over the oil rig’s deployment. On Wednesday, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki stated that China’s aggressive approach to advancing its claims over a broad stretch of the South China Sea "undermines peace and stability in the region."
On Thursday, after Chinese officials alleged that Vietnamese ships had attacked their vessels more than 170 times, Psaki reiterated that the United States sees China as the bad actor in this particular drama. "We think it’s the Chinese side that is exhibiting provocative actions here," she said.
She repeated the U.S. position at a briefing on Friday, saying that though the United States takes no position on the sovereignty dispute "any time there are provocative or unhelpful actions taken that put the maintenance of peace and stability at risk, I think that’s something that any country has the right to have concerns about."

For a nation that spent 30 years reassuring neighbors that it sought a "peaceful rise" in both economic and military power, China’s bold move to dispatch an oil rig to waters inside Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone, and then defend it with about 80 coast guard and naval vessels, raises serious questions. Here’s a good one with which to start : Just what is China thinking ?

"Something fundamental is taking place in China’s foreign-policy behavior," said David Lai, a China expert at the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College. "The Chinese are changing from a ’low profile, avoid showdowns’ approach to one that is more proactive."
Lai has spent years teaching U.S. defense officials to understand Chinese strategy through the board game of wei qi, also known as Go in the West. He says China’s dispatch of the oil rig to disputed waters, which is hard to justify on commercial, oil-extraction grounds, makes more sense if understood in terms of the stones, or pieces, that are strategically placed on a wei qi board.
"When you put facts on the ground, it’s like you put a stone there, and that stone has impact. The game is all about position-based power," he said, drawing parallels between the seemingly immovable oil rig and Chinese designs in the South China Sea.

Other China experts chalk up Beijing’s aggressive behavior to concerns among the ruling Communist Party’s senior leadership that one of the main pillars of its legitimacy and popular support – the country’s roaring economy – could be wobbling amid signs of slowing growth and a potentially devastating real estate bubble.

"Domestic political stability is probably the single most important interest that the Chinese are pursuing with their regional maritime strategy," said Peter Dutton, the head of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College.
He sees parallels with the way that China fanned the flames of nationalism and anti-Japanese sentiment during a 2012 dispute over the Senkaku Islands. "It was an opportunity to create domestic political space by dangling the bright, shiny object of nationalism off to the side and changing the focus of the conversation," Dutton said.

The big question is whether the brinkmanship around the oil rig is mere posturing or has the potential to turn into something far more serious. There are a couple of reasons to worry : Vietnam, unlike the Philippines and Japan, has no formal defense agreement with the United States, which means Beijing doesn’t have to worry about Washington being obliged to ride to Hanoi’s rescue. At the same time, Vietnam and China have fought each other, on and off, for centuries.

More recently, Vietnam and China fought a major land war in 1979 ; they clashed over Chinese occupation of the Paracel Islands, where the rig is, in 1974 ; and they collided in a deadly spat over disputed territories in the late 1980s that left scores of Vietnamese dead.
And while U.S. President Barack Obama made a point of reaffirming formal defense ties with Tokyo and Manila during his recent, four-country Asian tour, Vietnam has no such agreement with the United States. Until recently, in fact, many observers feared that U.S. defense obligations to Japan could suck the United States into a conflict with China because those obligations extend to the disputed Senkaku Islands claimed by both countries. Lately, however, China has made moves to lower the tension with Japan over those islands with diplomatic missions to Tokyo and fewer naval and air patrols of the disputed islands.

Could the naval skirmish between China and Vietnam move beyond water cannons to live fire ?
"I think so," said M. Taylor Fravel, an expert on Asian maritime disputes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "I’m not at all worried by shots being fired between China and the Philippines. But the Vietnamese have a different set of capabilities and they have a different history with China."
Given Vietnam’s desire to keep China from tapping what it sees as its national oil and gas wealth, and given the close proximity of so many ships, the jostling could "conceivably escalate to the use of armed force," Fravel said.

Dutton, meanwhile, says the combination of Vietnam’s vulnerability and China’s apparent belief that its vital national interests are at play in the oil dispute means that shots could soon be fired.
"It would seem to me that conflict is something that we all have to consider as a very real possibility," he said.

How does this affect the United States ? In Japan, Obama went out of his way to stress that U.S. security guarantees extend to the Senkaku Islands, perhaps to forestall the kind of ambiguity that led to the 1950 invasion of South Korea, when U.S. officials intimated that Seoul was not covered by the U.S. security blanket.

But in the South China Sea, the United States has no defense accord or alliance with Vietnam, and it takes no position on which country actually owns the collection of islands in the Paracel chain, which form the basis for China’s insistence that its oil rig is operating lawfully. Washington has simply stressed, as it has for years, that it wants to preserve freedom of navigation in the area and that it urges states to use peaceful means to resolve disputes. Notably, Tokyo and Washington backed the Philippines’ decision to take China to court over their islands dispute.

Still, just because Washington doesn’t want to become directly involved in the South China Sea doesn’t mean it can avoid it.
"This is a real challenge for the United States. One of the objectives in the region is to reassure allies, partners, and friends. And if we don’t get involved, then reassuring allies, partners, and friends is called into question," Dutton of the Naval War College said.

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) – Vietnam allowed several hundred demonstrators to stage a noisy rally outside the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi on Sunday against Beijing’s deployment of an oil rig in the contested South China Sea that has triggered a tense standoff and raised fears of confrontation.

The country’s authoritarian leaders keep a very tight grip on public gatherings for fear they could attract anti-government protesters.
This time, they appeared to give in to public anger that also provided them with the opportunity to register their own indignation at Beijing.

Other protests, including one drawing more than 1,000 people in Ho Chi Minh City, took place in other locations around the country. For the first time, they were reported on enthusiastically by the state media.
The government has in the past forcibly broken up anti-China protests and arrested their leaders, many of whom are also campaigning for greater political freedoms and human rights.

"We are infuriated by the Chinese actions," said Nguyen Xuan Hien, a lawyer who printed his own placard reading "Get Real. Imperialism is so 19th century."
"We have come to so that the Chinese people can understand our anger," he said.

Vietnam’s government immediately protested the deployment of the oil rig on May 1, and dispatched a flotilla that was unable to break through a circle of more than 50 Chinese vessels protecting the facility. The Vietnamese coast guard released video of Chinese vessels ramming and firing water cannons at Vietnamese ships.

The latest confrontation in the disputed Paracel Islands, which China occupied from U.S.-backed South Vietnam in 1974, has raised fears that tensions could escalate. Vietnam says the islands fall within its continental shelf and a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone. China claims sovereignty over the area and most of the South China Sea – a position that has brought Beijing in confrontation with other claimants, including the Philippines and Malaysia.

The protest Sunday was the largest since 2011, when a Chinese vessel cut seismic survey cables leading to a Vietnamese oil exploration ship. Vietnam sanctioned protests for a few weeks, but then broke them up after they became a forum of anti-government sentiment.
In the past, journalists covering protests had been harassed and sometimes beaten and protesters bundled into vans.

It was a different scene Sunday in a park across the road from the Chinese mission, where speakers atop police vans were broadcasting accusations that China’s actions violated the country’s sovereignty, state television was on hand to record the event and men were handing out banners saying "We entirely trust the party, the government and the people’s army."
While some demonstrators were clearly linked to the state, many others were ordinary Vietnamese outraged by China’s actions. Some activists chose to stay away because of the state’s involvement or implicit sanction of the event, according to online postings by dissident groups, but others showed up.

The United States has criticized China’s oil rig deployment as provocative and unhelpful. Foreign ministers from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations who gathered Saturday in Myanmar ahead of Sunday’s summit issued a statement expressing concern and urging restraint by all parties.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying responded by saying that the issue should not concern ASEAN and that Beijing was opposed to "one or two countries’ attempts to use the South Sea issue to harm the overall friendship and cooperation between China and ASEAN," according to state-run Xinhua News Agency.

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To discover a forgotten gem hidden away in the bowels of an ancient library must be the secret dream of any historian, and this is what happened to Richard Batchelor, an American historian of the British empire, a few years ago as he was rifling through the pages of an old catalogue of holdings in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Batchelor’s discovery was a long-lost 17th century Chinese map of China and Southeast Asia. It came to the attention of Timothy Brook, formerly professor of Chinese at Oxford University, and the result was this fascinating book.

The map is unusually large, measuring 160 by 96.5 centimeters. Unlike most such maps it is exquisitely hand painted, making it truly unique. Imperial China is often thought of as introverted and taking little interest in the outside world, but this map depicts the islands and mainland of Southeast Asia as much as it does China itself, and the routes Chinese ships took to navigate around the region.

The map is so remarkable that one might suspect it of being an extremely skilful forgery, but that possibility can be ruled out immediately. The Bodleian’s records show that it was donated to the library in 1659 by the lawyer John Selden – the story of Selden and how he acquired it is almost as interesting as the map itself.
Few non-specialists have heard of Selden, yet he was the greatest English lawyer of his day and helped to develop the modern law of the sea – hence his interest in this map, which he couldn’t actually read.

Selden left it to the Bodleian in his will, describing it as "a map of China made there fairly, and done in colors, together with a sea compass of their making and divisions, taken both by an English commander, who being pressed exceedingly to restore it at a great ransom, would not part with it."

Although Selden didn’t know Chinese, he was a pioneer of the study of Oriental languages in Europe and, apart from being a lawyer, he read and wrote Hebrew with ease. He also seems to have had a knowledge of Syriac, Arabic, Persian and Turkish. His last great scholarly project was on the political constitution of the ancient Jews, and according to Brook, "He was certain that every manuscript encoding Oriental knowledge had the potential to reveal world-changing knowledge, and should therefore be collected and preserved, even if no one could yet make sense of it."

The book puts the acquisition of the map by the Bodleian in the context of the history of Oriental studies in Britain and highlights the role of Michael Shen Fuzong, a Chinese Christian convert who arrived in Oxford in 1687 and who annotated the map with romanizations and translations.

Perhaps the most striking single feature of the map is the compass rose at the top above the Great Wall directly north of Beijing. "There is nothing strange about the actual compass," Brooks notes, "what really makes the compass strange is that it shouldn’t be there".

Chinese maps never include a compass rose, writes the author. "[N]one before the Selden map has one, and none after, until the European style took over in the twentieth century."

Brooks says he is (oxymoronically) "cautiously certain that the compass and a foot ruler beneath the rose are on the map as tell-tale signs that the Selden cartographer had seen European sea charts and realized that he could borrow them to excellent effect."

The discussion of the compass rose is linked to the sea routes shown on the map, and the author discusses in some detail how these are depicted although parts are rather technical and difficult to fully appreciate.

Although the map is probably primarily of interest as evidence of China’s rich maritime heritage, another intriguing fact is that it depicts Kubla Khan’s capital of Shangdu – better known in the west as Xanadu – in the northeast corner of China, with characters written inside a gourd instead of a circle like other place names.

Shangdu was no mythical city, but the capital of the Jin dynasty some 400 years before the map was created. The city had been abandoned three centuries before the map was drawn, so it’s little wonder that while the real Shangdu lay 300 kilometers directly north of Beijing, it is shown on the map about twice that distance to the east.
Despite this wobble, it’s striking to find evidence of Coleridge’s hallucinatory vision in such an unexpected place.

The author skillfully places the map in the context of both the history of Western and Chinese exploration, and includes an interesting account of a 16th-century text, Dong xi yang kao ("Study of the Eastern and Western Seas"), which Brook says is the only account we have of Chinese maritime endeavors in the South China Sea.

Also crucial in understanding the Selden map is the curiously named Laud rutter, a Chinese work donated to the Bodleian by the 17th century Archbishop Laud which is a sailing handbook based on a record of the routes sailed by the great Ming dynasty eunuch-admiral Zheng He.

The sea routes shown in the Laud rutter are similar to those on the Selden map, not, says Brook, because it was because Zheng’s fleets opened these routes for others to follow, but "because everyone used the same sea lanes before, during and after the Ming dynasty. Zheng He simply sailed his treasure ships, as they were called, where merchant seamen sailed their cargo junks."

In contemporary terms, it might be expected that the map could shed light on the bitter dispute over the Diaoyu (Senkaku) and other islands in the South China Sea claimed by China, much to the resentment of other nations in East Asia. But the islands are not clearly depicted on the map and Brook says it "has nothing to say" about who controlled them in the 17th century, still less who has a rightful claim to them in the 21st.

The book is attractively designed with clear illustrations, but the best way to examine the map in any detail is on a website created by the Bodleian. (The website also indicates that the map was not completely forgotten until Robert Batchelor rediscovered it in 2008 as Brook alleges, but its significance does seem to have been overlooked).

The map is still the bone of much scholarly contention, and Brook says that he seems to disagree with Batchelor about a great deal and that the latter "offers hypotheses that may not stand the test of time". So this book is unlikely to be the final word about the Selden map, but it is still an accessible introduction to a remarkable document.

Michael Rank is a London-based journalist and translator who has written extensively on China and North Korea for Asia Times Online. He graduated in Chinese from Cambridge University in 1972 and is a former Reuters correspondent in Beijing.

Long before China towed a huge oil platform into disputed waters east of Vietnam this week, the Vietnamese government started making preparations for just this situation.
Its response to the increased assertiveness of its powerful neighbor to the north, leaders decided, should be to invest heavily in advanced military capabilities – especially naval systems – that would make Beijing think twice before threatening Vietnamese interests.
Not all of Hanoi’s new military hardware had had time to arrive when over the past week tensions escalated over China’s plans to start drilling for oil in disputed waters off Vietnam. It isn’t clear whether more military might would have given China pause. Nor is it clear what the implications of a Chinese neighbor more aggressively arming itself may be for an already fragile regional-security landscape.

Like several of its neighbors, Vietnam has overlapping claims with China to large swaths of the South China Sea, including areas believed to be rich in energy reserves.
Their rivalry has ended in bloodshed in the past, with scores of Vietnamese troops dying in two separate clashes over disputed islets in the 1970s and 1980s. China remains in control of the territory it seized during those battles – a fact which irks Vietnamese nationalists to this day. But clashes haven’t always been one-sided victories for China. A 1979 border war, which was supposed to be a punitive incursion after Vietnam invaded Chinese ally Cambodia, ended inconclusively, with China bloodied.

Now, Vietnam is beefing up its firepower hoping to improve its odds in these exchanges.
"Vietnam has ordered these [new capabilities] as a deterrent to China and to show, if push comes to shove, that they’d be able to give China a bloody nose," said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, a Singapore-based think tank.

A new submarine fleet, comprising six Russian Kilo-class submarines, will be the jewel in the crown of Vietnamese defense – once it is up and running. But only two of the six boats have been delivered so far, and they won’t be fully operational for a while.
And even when all the orders have been delivered, Vietnam will still be far behind China in terms of military might. China is also rapidly modernizing its armed forces, and outguns Vietnam in every department – especially when it comes to naval forces. The Chinese navy possesses a fleet of 60 frigates and destroyers, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, as well as 35 attack submarines – although not all of these are tasked in the South China Sea.
Vietnam has various types of advanced military equipment in the pipeline besides its much-prized submarines. These include six new Gepard 3.9 frigates and 10 Molniya fast-attack craft from Russia, as well as two state-of-the-art Sigma corvettes from the Netherlands. These are all fast, and in some cases stealthy, types of ship armed with antiship missiles capable of denying Chinese vessels access to waters claimed by Hanoi.

The Russians are also helping Vietnam set up an antiship-missile production facility in the country, while providing the Vietnamese air force with a third squadron of modern Sukhoi Su-30MK2 fighter aircraft—an advanced jet which China itself operates.

Hanoi is meanwhile evaluating several European fighter jets, Mr. Huxley said, including the Eurofighter Typhoon, and the Gripen, built by Sweden’s Saab, with a view to further augmenting its air power. The addition of advanced European fighters could give Hanoi an important edge over Beijing, which is prevented from buying Western materiel by long-standing arms embargoes. China is, however, developing its own next-generation fighter aircraft.

Vietnam won’t assemble an arsenal to rival China’s, but its determined efforts to modernize its military could be sufficient to help shape future Chinese behavior, said Tim Huxley, the executive director of IISS-Asia, a security think tank.
He said, "The Vietnamese are serious customers," whose history of resistance against both the U.S. and China in the 1960s and 1970s still looms large in the national consciousness. "Vietnam can never defeat China," Mr. Huxley continued, "but they can offer bloody resistance to China."
As a fellow Communist regime which must be responsive to nationalist pressures, Beijing understands that Hanoi cannot allow itself to be humiliated when it comes to the protection of national sovereignty, he said, "and so China cannot be sure at what point Vietnam would respond militarily." That uncertainty would serve as a brake on Chinese actions that could potentially invite Vietnamese reprisals, he said.

In addition, the bond between the two neighbors, though strained at times, is also deep, both culturally and economically. Communications are frequent : A deputy Vietnamese prime minister attended last month’s Boao forum, a Chinese-government sponsored talk shop on Hainan island. Their militaries, too, have periodic visits, and in 2013 the two sides agreed to set up a hotline between their two navies to help reduce the risk of conflict.

Meanwhile, Vietnam’s military buildup to counter China stands in stark contrast to some of China’s other neighbors also involved in territorial spats, such as the Philippines, which is taking China to court in The Hague, accusing it of breaching the United Nations Law of the Sea through its territorial claims.

Some in Vietnam ask whether a military buildup alone will be enough to temper Chinese behavior.
"Vietnam should take stronger diplomatic steps," argued Tran Cong Truc, a former head of Vietnam’s National Border Committee. "Maybe it’s time for Vietnam to quickly sue China" at the U.N.," he suggested, following the lead of the Philippines.

However, Mr. Storey said that China’s outright rejection of the U.N. tribunal launched at the Philippines’ request would be more likely to convince Hanoi that it needed to double down on its military approach, and order still more new weaponry.
"Events like [the deployment of the Chinese oil rig] will simply accelerate Vietnam’s military modernization," he said.

The South China Sea
Troubled waters
A thoughtful look at Asia’s dangerous flashpoint

Asia’s Cauldron : The South China Sea and the End to a Stable Pacific. By Robert Kaplan. Random House ; 225 pages.

ASIA has enjoyed comparative stability in the chaotic years since the cold war. But the rise of China is now challenging that, as American dominance of the western Pacific fades. Comparisons of Asia to the Europe of 1914 are part of a bigger question about whether China just wants to be a benign regional hegemon, or if it has expansionist aims.

At the heart of the debate are the islands of the East and South China Seas, where China’s behaviour seems to indicate its broader intentions. At first glance, it does not look good. China has increasingly emphasised its sovereignty over all islands within a “nine-dash line” stretching over the whole South China Sea. Its military budget grew this year by 12%. It has moved its main submarine base to Hainan island on the sea’s northern edge, and it is beefing up its maritime enforcement agencies.

In “Asia’s Cauldron” Robert Kaplan says the Pacific will become unstable, but he does not think this must lead to war. Mr Kaplan, who has found a niche writing books that are a cross between journalism and policy prescription, is sanguine about China’s ambitions, claiming the region’s rising power, “however truculent, is no Imperial Japan”. He argues that comparisons to 1914 are overblown. The South China Sea is undoubtedly the Mitteleuropa of the 21st century, he says, but there is one big difference. “Europe is a landscape ; East Asia a seascape”, and the oceans will act as a barrier against aggression.

He suggests the better comparison is to America’s 19th-century approach to the Caribbean. China is seeking an Asian version of the Monroe Doctrine, by which America took over from European nations as the supreme power in the western hemisphere. If China wants that role in the East, asks Mr Kaplan, why should it not have it ? “American officials…must be prepared to allow, in some measure, for a rising Chinese navy to assume its rightful position, as the representative of the region’s largest indigenous power.”

Mr Kaplan’s fascinating book is a welcome challenge to the pessimists who see only trouble in China’s rise and the hawks who view it as malign. He says that China’s power will grow whether America likes it or not, and that accommodating its rise, up to a point, is not capitulation. One reason he is sanguine is the absence of a great ideological struggle. It is all about power, he says, in a world “void of moral struggles”. Many will point to the brutality of the Leninist Chinese party-state, but Mr Kaplan insists that the Communist Party will not necessarily bully abroad because it bullies at home.

The author takes a pragmatic view of the politics of China’s neighbours. He admires enlightened authoritarians such as the former leaders of Singapore and Malaysia, Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Mohamad. Again, he is to be praised for sticking to an unpopular viewpoint that should not be dismissed without discussion by Westerners. But he sometimes gets distracted by his obsession with geography, and the book also suffers from largely ignoring the East China Sea and the relationship with Japan, which could be much more important.

Though Mr Kaplan is trying to assuage fears, he admits that a more complicated Asia awaits, “a nervous world, crowded with warships and oil tankers”. He may be too optimistic about China and enlightened authoritarianism, and China will not for a long time, if ever, replace America as the safeguarder of the global commons. Pax Sinica is still far beyond the horizon.

REGIONAL FOCUS & CONTROVERSIES Vietnam’s Position on the Sovereignty over the Paracels & the Spratlys : Its Maritime Claims par Hong Thao Nguyen�

New Commitment to a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea ? BY CARLYLE A. THAYER

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appeared to side with ASEAN and rebuke China on the South China Sea dispute during the East Asian Summit in Brunei this week.

The sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea predictably commanded much attention during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and East Asia Summits this past week.
During his otherwise conciliatory speech at the latter event, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang forcefully made the case for China’s long-standing preference of trying to resolve the disputes bilaterally with only the parties directly involved.

“Territorial and maritime disputes between countries in this region should be resolved by the countries concerned through friendly consultation,” Li said during the speech, according to state-run media outlets in China.

Speaking shortly after Li at the same forum, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seemed to directly refute China’s position, although with some diplomatic subtlety.
“A stable maritime environment is essential to realize our collective regional aspirations,” Singh said according to an official transcript of the speech.
“We welcome the collective commitment by the concerned countries to abide by and implement the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea and to work towards the adoption of a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea on the basis of consensus. We also welcome the establishment of the Expanded ASEAN Maritime Forum for developing maritime norms that would reinforce existing international law relating to maritime security.”

When asked by an Indonesian newspaper how rivalries in Asian powers could best be managed, Singh continued advocating the use of multilateral institutions to solve disputes.
“Regional forums can play a useful role in this process,” Singh said in response. “We, therefore, see immense value in the East Asia Summit, ASEAN Regional Forum, ADMM+ and other cooperative mechanisms in the region.”

India has periodically inserted itself into the South China Sea dispute in the past on the side of ASEAN countries, much to China’s displeasure. Notably, after Chinese fishing vessels sought to disrupt India’s joint oil and gas exploration with Vietnam in disputed parts of the South China Sea last year, Indian Navy Chief Admiral D.K Joshi said that Delhi was prepared to send naval ships into the South China Sea to protect the country’s interests.

Speaking of the South China Sea in December of last year, Joshi said : “Not that we expect to be in those waters very frequently, but when the requirement is there for situations where the country’s interests are involved, for example ONGC Videsh, we will be required to go there and we are prepared for that.”

India has also dismissed Chinese criticism of its willingness to engage in joint oil and gas explorations with Vietnam in waters that China also claims. Delhi has to walk a fine line in the South China Sea, lest it provoke Beijing into increasing pressure on India’s Navy closer to home in the Indian Ocean.

Following the regional conferences this week, Indonesia President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono met with Singh in Jakarta on Friday where the two sides pledged to expand their strategic cooperation. In addition to attending APEC this week, Singh was also given a state visit by Indonesia.

US Secretary of State John Kerry gave tacit backing to the Philippines’ stance in a tense maritime dispute with China on Thursday, saying that all countries had a right to seek arbitration to resolve competing territorial claims.

The Philippines, a US ally, has angered China by launching an arbitration case with the United Nations to challenge the legal validity of Beijing’s sweeping claims over the resource-rich South China Sea.

The United States has refrained from taking sides in the dispute, one of Asia’s biggest security headaches, but has expressed a national interest in freedom of navigation through one of the world’s busiest shipping channels.

“All claimants have a responsibility to clarify and align their claims with international law. They can engage in arbitration and other means of peaceful negotiation,” Kerry told leaders at the East Asia Summit in Brunei, including Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a news conference in Kuala Lumpur October 10, 2013. Kerry is in Malaysia to meet with Malaysian officials and attend the Global Entrepreneurship Summit. REUTERS/Jacquelyn Martin/Pool

“Freedom of navigation and overflight is a linchpin of security in the Pacific,” he added.
China claims almost the entire oil- and gas-rich South China Sea, overlapping with claims from Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Vietnam. The last four are members of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).

The row is one of the region’s biggest flashpoints amid China’s military build-up and the US strategic “pivot” back to Asia signalled by the Obama administration in 2011.

Diplomatic efforts to ease tensions are now centred on Chinese talks with Asean to frame a code of conduct for disputes in the South China Sea, but Beijing has restricted talks to low-level consultations rather than formal negotiations.

The annual East Asia Summit ended on Thursday without significant progress on the dispute, with a joint Asean-China statement saying only that the two sides had agreed to “maintain the momentum of the regular official consultations”.

DELAYING TACTICS ?
Frustrated by the slow pace of regional diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute, the Philippines has hired a crack international legal team to fight its unprecedented arbitration case under the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea – ignoring growing pressure from Beijing to scrap the action.

Any result will be unenforceable, legal experts say, but will carry considerable moral and political weight.

Beijing has accused the Philippines of pursuing the case to legalise its occupation of islands in the disputed sea and said it would never agree to cooperate.

Some diplomats have expressed concern that the Asean-China consultations are a bid by China to delay a final agreement on a code while it expands its naval reach and consolidates its expansive claims.

Asean Secretary-General Le Luong Minh, in an interview with Reuters, insisted that the consultations that had their first round in China in September were a sign of progress.
“It’s especially important progress if we look at what happened a year before,” he said, referring to an unprecedented breakdown of an Asean summit in Cambodia over a failure to agree wording on the South China Sea.

The next round of talks will take place at an unspecified time next year, still at the relatively low “senior official” level.

On Wednesday, the United States and Japan – which has its own maritime dispute with Beijing – both pressured China to agree to abide by rules for the South China Sea, where Beijing has backed its claims with an increasingly assertive naval reach.

A Japanese official cited prime minister Shinzo Abe as telling Philippine President Benigno Aquino that Japan was “seriously concerned over efforts to alter the status quo by force, by intimidation or coercion”.